


I'm Dripping Icicles

by Snickfic



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Minnesota Wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: It’d been fun when Mikko had changed tohisice form, all smooth and gleaming, like a sculpture, and Zucks had turned so pale. Mikael had teased him about it. But now Zuck was about to look at him the exact same way, and it didn’t seem like much fun at all.





	I'm Dripping Icicles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aimerai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the thanks you get](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191009) by [aimerai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/pseuds/aimerai). 



> aimerai, I enjoyed remixing your fic! I hope you enjoy what I did with it. I was really intrigued by those hints of Granlund/Zucker and wanted to see where they went. :D
> 
> Title courtesy Azealia Banks.

“Show me,” Zucks said. He had that look Mikael recognized from when Zucks took a hard hit or blocked a shot but was hopping over the boards again anyway. He stood in Mikael’s living room with his hands wedged firmly in his pockets, like they’d be safe there.

It’d been fun when Mikko had changed to _his_ ice form, all smooth and gleaming, like a sculpture, and Zucks had turned so pale. Mikael had teased him about it. But now Zucks was about to look at him the exact same way, and it didn’t seem like much fun at all. “Don’t laugh,” Mikael warned, as though that were what he was afraid of. 

It took Mikael a few moments to let go, he was holding on so tight. But he did, finally, loosing that not-quite-unconscious grip and letting his ice self rise to surface. Usually he loved this moment when his true skin was bared. Sometimes he’d go out to his back yard, hedged in all sides by shrubs, and let the sun try its worst, knowing he was always colder than any weak rays it could cast upon him. Anyway, he liked the it sparkled and shone through his skin.

But this time Zucks was right there, not saying anything. Mikael avoided his gaze until Zucks’s hand approached in the corner of his vision. Mikael jerked away, Zucks yanked his hand back, and they stared at each other. “You can’t touch,” Mikael said. “I could hurt you.” All those sharp spikes, waiting to catch on fragile human skin.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t—sorry.” 

“I’m gonna go throw this shirt,” Mikael said. He’d poked holes in places. This was why he usually stripped before he changed.

He had to change back to get the shirt off, and the jeans, and the underwear. He wondered how many pairs of underwear Mikko went through in a season. Probably none. Probably he never settled into ice at inopportune times, like he was always chiding Mikael for.

When he came back out, Zucks jumped up from where he’d been sitting on the arm of the sofa. “Sorry,” he said again.

“It’s fine.” Then Zucks opened his arms and stepped closer. Oh god, an apology hug. Mikael sidestepped away. “Sorry, it’s—sometimes when I touch people, or if I get, uh—” Zucks was looking at him with concern, maybe a little bit of hurt. “Sometimes I can’t hold it in.”

“Oh.” Zucks stuffed his hands back in his pockets. “Sorry, man. Shit, I’m fucking this up.”

“It’s fine,” Mikael said. “Just maybe, uh, no touchy for a while.”

Zucks nodded vigorously. “No touchy.”

It would be. It’d be fine.

\--

“Show me again,” Zucks said. They’d beaten the Avs at home, and then they’d gotten drunk, and now he was leaning into Mikael, heavy and so hot—maybe not quite as hot as other people, who hadn’t learned the language of ice, but Mikael was too wasted to differentiate. Zucks prodded a finger in Mikael’s side. “Show me,” he slurred, not sounding all that much better off than Mikael.

“You don’t want to see,” Mikael said.

“I do, really, I promise. I won’t be weird.”

After a beat, Mikael shoved Zucks away. Over Zucks’s mumbled protests, he said, “I’ll hurt you if you’re too close.” Mikael wasn’t actually sure about the injury risk. Maybe all his jagged edges would melt instantly against Zucks’s skin. Zucks was like a furnace, full of fire, crackling quietly all the time and never quite silent. But it was a dumb risk to take—he didn’t want Zucks to have to explain to the trainers where all these weird punctures along his left side had come from. 

“Geez, Granny,” Zucks said, when Mikael began to tug his t-shirt over his head. Zucks leered, purposefully sleazy.

“I don’t need to destroy another shirt,” Mikael said, stuffing it between the couch cushions, out of the way. He rolled his neck.

After a moment, Zucks prodded him again. “So?”

Mikael looked down at himself, at his bare arms, still pink and human-looking. “Just a minute,” he said. He didn’t usually have to _try_ to find the ice; it was always just there, waiting to emerge. But this time nothing happened. He could feel the subzero chill in his veins, but it flowed freely, without the slightest inclination to crystalize. “It’s not—I don’t— _Zucks_ ,” he said, on the edge of panic.

“So you’re saying you can’t Hulk out now? Or ice out, or whatever?”

“I don’t know!” Mikael said. He stared down at his hands, like that would help. “I have to call Mikko.”

“Right now?”

Mikael was pretty drunk, but not so drunk that he couldn’t hear a funny note in Zucks’s voice. Zucks was looking somewhere along Mikael’s leg—his knee? There was nothing interesting about Mikael’s knee. It was just a joint. “Why?” Mikael demanded. It pulled Zucks’s attention back to his face. “Do you know how to fix me?”

“I mean, no, but—” Zucks shuffled clumsily along the couch until he was squinting into Mikael’s eyes, like he was thinking really hard. Or however hard he could think, with that much beer in him. He took a deep, snuffling breath through his nose, and then he leaned in and kissed Mikael sloppily on the lips.

It didn’t last long. He mouthed wetly at Mikael for a moment or two and then pulled away again. When he met Mikael’s eyes, he looked all—fragile. Like an ice crystal sprouted on a window pane, intricate and perfect and vulnerable to every breath of warmth. “Zucks?”

“You always say you can’t touch too much, or it’ll fuck with your control. But maybe it’d be okay now.”

“You want to touch?” Mikael said dumbly.

Zucks shrugged. He looked sturdier now, less likely to shatter at first resistance. He looked like he was trying not to smile. “For a while,” he said. “Since they put us on a line. You mean you didn’t?” The smile melted away. “I thought—”

Mikael was way too drunk for thinking, or for Zucks to be wearing all those feelings on his face. He took Zucks’s face in both hands and kissed him back. Zucks’s face was kind of scratchy, but his mouth was warm and wet and tasted like beer—so much beer. That hoppy stuff he’d been brought along to drink himself because Mikael didn’t care for it. Somehow it tasted better on Zucks than out of the bottle.

Belatedly Mikael pulled back to say, “You can touch.”

Zucks grinned at him. “Awesome.” He brushed his hands along Mikael’s ribs, settling on Mikael’s waist, and it was really fucking great. Touching was great. They should touch all the time, Mikael thought, and went back in for another kiss.

\--

Mikael woke up with that mild headache that meant he’d managed to hydrate at least a little before he fell asleep. There was somebody next to him—Zucks. Zucks was lying next to him, warming the whole bed with that furnace-like heat of his. He was drooling into one of Mikael’s pillows. Huh.

Mikael had text notifications. They were from Mikko, sent hours ago: _Are you drunk?_ and _You know alcohol keeps us from freezing_. Well, of course it did. Anyone ice-borne knew that. Mikael scrolled further up to see his own messages, garbled by beer and auto-correct almost beyond comprehension. 

He got up to piss. Gradually, things came back to him: Zucks feeling him up. Zucks kissing him, all drunk-sloppy. Zucks looking at him with those hopeful puppy-eyes. And then, finally, he remembered that spike of panic when he couldn’t find the ice inside himself, when winter’s chill poured through him like a cataract and found no stillness.

He tried it now. Instantly, ice erupted from the surface of his skin: spikes and shards, white and ice-blue and utterly colorless. He looked down and sighed at the shredded remains of his boxer-briefs. Idiot. But he was too relieved by the sight of his own familiar spikiness to care much. He tugged at the cloth, trying to stretch it over the jagged edges of himself, but there were too many, and finally he gave up. He could deal with it later. 

He wandered back to the bedroom and looked at Zucks again, stretched out under Mikael’s sheets. Sober now, Mikael could almost taste that ice melt that Zucks carried in him, that crystalline love that he must have willed into his blood by sheer will, out there in the desert. Mikael sat nearby and carefully brushed his hand, furred with ice shards, along Zucks’s arm. 

Zucks stirred and rolled over. Slowly he blinked his eyes open. “Oh,” he said. “You’re all—” He waved his hand.

“You wanted to see,” Mikael said.

“I did.” Zucks struggled upright, blinking the sleep from his eyes. He looked Mikael over: along the side of his head, into his ear, down to his shoulder sharp and spiked. Zucks wasn’t pale this time, just focused and intent. “So you’re fine, I guess.”

“Mm?”

“With the—” Zucks waved his hand at Mikael. “The ice. Last night—” 

“It was because of the beer. Lower freezing point.”

It took Zucks a moment. Then he laughed, loud and bright, like wood popping in a fire. “Seriously?”

If Mikael could have blushed then, he would have. “I forgot.”

Zucks laughed some more, easy and fond. Gradually he sobered. “Does that mean we can only—I mean—was this just one time? Because you said—” He met Mikael’s eyes, and he looked so sad it hurt a little to look at.

“I said what?” Mikael said, utterly baffled.

“No touchy,” Zucks said, making a face.

Everything in Mikael stilled a little more. He shifted his hand onto his knee and said, “You can touch.”

Zucks searched Mikael’s eyes for a moment. He looked down at Mikael’s hand. Cautiously, at glacial speed, Zucks reached out and brushed his fingertips across the back. He was still so hot, chock full of warm human blood, and his touch traced a shallow melted indent across Mikael’s hand. 

“Just ice,” Mikael said. 

Zucks huffed softly. “ _Just_.”

Mikael cupped Zucks’s shoulder and leaned in. Zucks watched him approach, wide-eyed, until they were barely an inch apart. Mikael stilled, letting Zucks exhale hot breaths until Mikael thought he’d probably melted the sharpest edges, and then Mikael pressed his lips to Zucks’s. He tightened his grip on Zucks’s shoulder.

The kiss only lasted a moment before Zucks pulled back. “I’m gonna go numb, man,” he said, smiley and blushing.

Mikael let the ice melt away then, finally, back into his skin and his chill, frozen heart. He grinned back. He felt lightheaded with the sudden bloodflow—or with other things, maybe. He leaned in again. Just as he reached Zucks’s mouth, Zucks said, “But what about the touching?”

“We’ll figure it out. My control isn’t really that bad.” He kissed Zucks again. Then, “I’ll get Mikko to teach me some tips, in case.” Mikko would love that. He’d get all excited in that subdued, old-man way. “It’ll be fine.”

It would. It’d be fine.

It’d be _great_.

[end]


End file.
